Born in Death (In Death #23)(65)

She swiveled away from the screen, looked him in the eyes. “Are you all right on this? The Tandy thing.”

Foolish, he admitted, to believe she didn’t see, didn’t know. More foolish, he supposed, for him to try to block it from her, or from himself. “I’m not, actually, not completely. It resonates a little too deep for me. I don’t know if it’s anger or grief I’m feeling. It must be both.”

“Roarke, we don’t know Tandy’s in the same kind of situation as your mother was.”

“We don’t know she isn’t.” Idly, he picked up the little statue of the goddess Eve kept on her desk. A symbol of the female. “He waited until after I was born to murder her, my mother. But she was trying to protect me, do what she thought best for me. As I expect Tandy is doing, whoever has her now.”

He set the statue down. “I just want my mind off it for a while.”

He so rarely hurt, she thought. So rarely let himself, she corrected. “I can take this one back to Central. Keep it out of here.”

“No.” He moved to her then, taking her face in his hands. “That won’t do, not for either of us. What once was made us who we are, one way or another. But it can’t stop us from doing what we do. They’ll have won then, won’t they?”

She put her hands over his. “They can’t win. They can only screw with us.”

“And so they do.” He leaned down, pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll steep myself in numbers for a while. They always clear my head.”

“God knows how. I’m going to make coffee. All around?”

“If I had some cake to go with it. I got shafted on that end of the deal.”

“Cake?” Her mind circled around. “Oh, right. Mavis. I think there was some left. Those women were like vultures when something had icing on it. Maybe the Dark Shadow stocked some of the leftovers in the AutoChef. I could probably choke down a piece myself.”

And thinking that sugar and caffeine kept the blood moving, she made it a large piece along with strong, black coffee. He’d be all right, she told herself, because he wouldn’t let himself be otherwise. But she’d keep a finger on the pulse, and if she didn’t like the beat, she’d move the Tandy investigation out of the house.

For convenience, she set Tandy’s board next to the one she’d already started on her other case. And on the side with a slick white surface began to handwrite a time line.

She made lists of names. People she’d already spoken with on one side, those she would contact in the morning on the other. She tacked up Tandy’s ID photo.

Her first step was to call the contact number of the parking lot. As she expected, she was transferred to an endless menu of choices, and quickly selected operator before the droning litany could bore her into a coma.

“Courtesy Messaging Service.” The voice was nasal as a trombone and dense with Queens.

“This is Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD,” Eve began and gave her badge number. “I need information on the Park and Go, Fifty-eighth Street.”

“For information, please call Customer Service between the hours of eightA .M. and—”

“I need information now, and I don’t want to talk to some hand-patter at Customer Service.”

“Well, jeez. This is a messaging service, you know, for, like, twenty businesses in Manhattan alone. I don’t have information about a parking lot.”

“Put me through to the owner.”

“I’m not supposed to bother the client with—”

“Maybe you should give me your name and location. I’ll send a couple of uniforms to pick you up, and you can tell me how you’re not supposed to bother the client when you get down to Cop Central.”

“Well,jeez. You gotta wait a minute.”

Eve was put on wait mode while music sweeter than the icing on her cake tinkled in her ear.

During the ten minutes it played—with periodic computer-generated bulletins assuring her that her call was important—she began a series of probability runs.

By the time an actual human came back on, she was drinking her second cup of coffee and studying the results.

“Lieutenant, is it?” The man looked slick and sounded same.

“That’s right. And you are?”

“Matt Goodwin. You’re inquiring about the Park and Go on Fifty-eighth?”

“That’s right. Do you own it?”

“I represent the corporation that does. What seems to be the problem?”

“I’m investigating a possible crime in which this lot may be involved. I need the security discs as well as the logs for Thursday last, between eighteen and nineteen hundred hours.”

“What possible crime?”

“It’s a Missing Persons matter. I need the discs and the logs as soon as possible.”

“I believe those discs are dumped every twenty-four, Lieutenant. As for the logs, I assume you have a warrant?”

“I can get one.”

“Well, when you do—”

“And when I do, I’ll see it includes logs for an entire week, as well as a search into the lot’s—and the corporation that owns it—standards and practices. I’ll have to bring you and your client into Central for questioning. Or, you can get me the logs for that single hour of that single day.”